Hopes rise that new leader intends to reform Mao's hated labour camps

Hopes rise that new leader intends to reform Mao's hated labour camps

• BY:LEO LEWIS 
• From:The Times 
• January 08, 2013 12:44PM

CHINA may be about to reform its "re-education through labour" regime - a reviled system of extra-judicial discipline used to muzzle criticism of the Communist Party and imprison thousands without trial.

Reports surfaced yesterday on China's state television website quoting Meng Jianzhu, the most senior law enforcement official, as saying that the system known as laojiao was outdated and would be stopped this year.

The reaction online was elation. After years of protest there was hope that the police would be stripped of their power to plunge citizens into one of 350 labour camps for up to four years.

However, the story quickly disappeared from the website. By late evening all that remained was a terse account by the state news agency, Xinhua, saying: "The Chinese Government will this year push the reform of its controversial re-education through labour system." The prospect of reform comes less than three months after Xi Jinping was installed as Secretary-General of the Communist party. He began what is expected to be a decade in power with a pledge to address reform vigorously.

Before he was confirmed as China's new leader, political analysts predicted that Mr Xi might try some superficial reform of the labour camps: outwardly responding to public disgust, but leaving in place a system that would allow authorities to make troublemakers "disappear".

As China's online censors scrambled to suppress discussion of laojiao reform on weibo, the country's equivalent of Twitter, activists declared that the fact that reform was on the table was a victory for the internet. Pu Zhiqiang, a human rights lawyer, said: "Through discussion on new media, China's leaders have come to realise how nasty the laojiao system is and how much it is hated."

Weibo has been used to expose a string of abuses of the system. These included the 18-month sentence for a mother who petitioned for a more severe punishment for the men who raped her 11-year-old daughter. The woman's crime, according to police, was "disturbing social order and exerting a negative impact on society".

Re-education through labour was introduced in 1957 under Mao Zedong, and evolved into a tool for stifling dissent. Many lawyers believe that it stands in direct contravention of the constitution.

THE TIMES